As of press time, school bus drivers went ready to go on strike for the first time in 34 years, leaving parents the task of shuttling nearly 152,000 students to class in all five boroughs.

Although the city has offered to provide Metrocards and reimburse parents who have been forced to pick up where the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 1181 bus drivers left off, parents now have one less reason to trust the system protecting and supposedly obligated to the protection of their children in this bargaining period.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg declares the union’s demands unfeasible, saying their “decision to strike has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with job protections that the city legally cannot include in its bus contracts.”

Earlier this month, the Teachers Union spent $1.1 million on a television ad to attack Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s rant comparing the teacher’s commitment to their union with the NRA, when he said, “The NRA’s another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with leadership.”

One has to wonder where the unions’ heart really is when dealing with the education system in the city, or wonder why they’re even wondering?

While it is understood that there will always be financial and contract disagreements between unions and their employers, and mayors will often say things that cause a hullabaloo, does this mean that the people who are most vulnerable, yet most fundamental in the web of the system should be left to suffer?

In a time when parents are forced to work two or three jobs to put food on the table and the looming threat of gun violence continues to threaten schools across the country, parents shouldn’t have to worry about a system breakdown also compromising the safety of their children.